I’ve not traveled much outside the United States, so I’m not certain about the rest of the world.  However I am certain that a shockingly large percentage of business in America is conducted in coffee shops.  Local, little, fragrant, friendly coffee shops. 

Today I’m at my favorite coffee shop – a Scooters near 120th and Blondo.  It even has a small meeting room you can sign up to borrow.  I’m sure business would get done without coffee shops, but life would be much less pleasant and we’d see our friends and aquaintances much less often.  Plus we’d all have to find another source  of caffeine – and who has the energy for that? 

My point is that in all this rushing around that seems to accompany modern life, I love the peace and companionship found in coffee shops. 

I long for a larger coffee shop that would contain the trappings of an office (basically a copier/printer) and rent tables or desks (though I’d refer a tall table) to really small businesses like mine.  Perhaps this would destroy the magic.  Let me know if you hear of any such place.  It would be fun to visit my personal business/coffee promise land.

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Do you regularly experience psychological flow?  Do you want to?   Does the idea frighten you a little?  Do you know what psychological flow is?

I knew in my bones that flow existed before I had the word “flow” to label the experience.  I was unbelievably thrilled to stumble across Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s definition of the concept and accompanying “handle” last fall.  Having a word has made this idea much easier to discuss with others. 

Besides having an intriguing name, Csikszentmaihalyi defines flow as total absorption in an activity.  These are bare, dull words to describe the magical wonder of losing yourself so deeply in a project you feel so passionately about that you forget anything else exists. 

For flow to exist you must:

• Be involved in a project you find personally rewarding
• Have clear and attainable goals
• Be capable of handling that project, but also have the project challenge your skills
• Have control over your work  
• Not feel the least bit self-conscious about yourself or the work you’re producing
• Be able to concentrate on the project to the exclusion of other thoughts (including bodily functions)
• Lose tract of time

For me, flow is the mental equivalent of a runners high.  You find your rhythm and work your way through the process until you burst into an awareness of an amazing clear, clean feeling of accomplishment. 

As kids we seem to experience flow much more easily and regularly than we do as adults.  Think of the child absorbed in play or dancing to unheard music.  This may be attributed to our adult size responsibilities.  However, I believe we’d find more time and means as adults to experience flow  if we placed a higher value on creativity. 

I also believe that we recognize the results of flow when we see them.  They’re new, different, intriguing, alluring, clever and authentic.  They have a sense of truth and honesty about them.  Great things come from flow.  Watch for them and they’ll begin to stand out like beacons of light.   

PS3 Flow

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Book Review:   Sway – The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman

There are many books that we all read (i.e. anything and everything by Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell).  The Brafman brothers should also be on that list.  If you enjoyed “Flirting with Disaster” by Marc Gerstein you’ll probably love Sway. 

Ori is an organizational expert.   He wrote “The Starfish and the Spider” – another great book.  Briefly organizations with a centralized spider leader sitting on the top of an org chart struggle greatly when they lose the spider.  Starfish organizations have decentralized autonomous divisions that survive the departure of many leaders and can thrive when cut off from the rest of the organization.  Starfish good, spider not so much.  Rom is a practicing psychologist.  Together the two have a funny, engaging and sneakily educational writing style.   

The book pulls together a large amount of research concerning how we make decisions and spoon feeds it to us in yummy easy to swallow bite size pieces.  Time and time again the brothers will make you aware of thought patterns you unconsciously fall into on a regular basis.  It would be down right spooky if it weren’t so fascinating and if you didn’t feel greatly empowered by your new awareness of these mental traps. 

There was only one aspect of the book that I didn’t like and that was the intentionally disjointed chapter summaries.  They’re annoyingly reminiscent of the format found in “The Black Swan” by Nasim Nicholas Taleb and make just about as much sense.

Sway is an enjoyable, educational and absolutely irresistible read.

One of the Biggest Reasons I Love Nebraska

I meet regularly with two different groups of people.  By regularly I mean that I meet with each of the groups at least twice a month for 2-4 hours at a time.  Both groups are committed to a particular topic to study, but strongly encourage tangential discussions.  It’s a serious commitment of time, thought and energy.  

I love these interactions and feel it would be truthful to say that I need them.  (This is a little stickier for me to say than it used to be because one of my groups is studying truth – what it means, what it is, how you recognize it, what should be done with it once it’s found…) 

I’m a better human being because I interact regularly with these wonderful people.   They make me smarter.  They also encourage me to dream, hold me to high standards, tell me when my ideas stink, give me advice and provide all other sorts of support that I fear I generally take for granted. 

While I don’t have any quantifiable data, I do know from friends who have moved away that these groups are not so common elsewhere.  Even my most gregarious friends have encountered difficulties in forming and maintaining these kinds of groups outside of Nebraska.  I don’t know why this is the case, but I do know that these groups are a wonderful benefit of being a Nebraskan. 

Are you in such a group?  Do you want to be?   How might your life change if you were?  Every group I’ve ever belonged to began with just one person asking another to meet.  Trust me, it will snowball from there – and that’s the truth.

Innoveering

I enjoy words.  They’re useful, versatile and can be quite entertaining.  The right word at the right moment is an amazing convergence of thought, purpose and action (“Nuts!”).

Some words are timeless (freedom), while others are not (groovey).  Occasionally words can lose their meaning through overuse or repeated misuse.  Sometimes new words are needed to capture new thoughts. 

Innoveering isn’t formally recognized as a word yet, but it will be.  The general consensus is that it’s pioneering innovation.  Innovation with a twist of adventure and a dash of daring.  Imagine modern pioneers exploring and pushing back the edges of established creativity and thought.  Imagine people failing with gusto and verve, dusting themselves off and moving on to find out what’s behind the next hill.  You never know when and where the next great idea will be found.  You can however be certain that the innoveers amongst us are searching for it.  Fo’ shizzle.    

For those of you who also love words and haven’t yet heard Erin McKean speak, treat yourself today and listen to one of her talks (here or here) or check out her lexicography blog.   

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Who are Entrepreneurs?

This week the new Chairman of the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA), Rocco Landesman, referred to artists as entrepreneurs on the PBS News Hour.  The message is part of his “Art Works” tour.  I believe he’s right and it got me thinking about how exactly I define entrepreneurship and who qualifies for the moniker. 

 The only conclusion I’ve reached so far is that a lot more people are entrepreneurs than realize it or will admit to it. 

For example, a friend buys Legos from individuals on-line (the big boxes of “left-overs” every home has), matches the individual pieces from multiple bulk purchases with the building instructions she downloads from Lego’s website, has her two sons put together the newly compiled kits, photographs the completed kits and sells them on-line.

In her mind this system she’s devised is just a little hobby that enables her sons to put together as many Lego kits as they want.  From her perspective this “hobby” is not important, elaborate or creative enough to be labeled “entrepreneurial.”  But I think she’s wrong and I believe there are a lot of people out there just like her. 

What would happen if these entrepreneurs realized who they were?  Why is this behavior so difficult for us to acknowledge?  What can we do to encourage and celebrate these entrepreneurial endeavors?

To read more about the message of the Art Works Tour, check out: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/

To watch the PBS New Hour interview that started this thought process, go to:  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/

Connections: Imagination First & The Time Paradox

So what’s the connection between imagination and time perspectives? John Boyd, co-author of “The Time Paradox” has the answer. Years before he joined Google, he spent two weeks teaching 50 students at community colleges in San Mateo California to shift more towards a future time perspective through mental simulation. 

The outcomes were both astounding and heartbreaking. At the end of the study, two students reported “I set a goal and it came true. That never happened before.” and “At first I did not understand what this mental simulation was about. But it has helped me achieve one of my most important goals, staying out of jail” (quotes from The Time Paradox). 

While mental simulation sounds like science fiction, it’s actually a fancy word for using your imagination to mentally play act several possible scenarios. Yes, it’s as simple as that. If you’re reading this, you’re probably at least some future time perspective and may have trouble believing that community college students need to be taught to use their imaginations. It’s true though. Remember we view the world through our own time tinted glasses. 

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Book Review: The time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo & John Boyd

The core of the book is the concept that each of us sees the world through time tinted glasses. If we increase our awareness of how we relate to time and how those around us relate to time, we can improve both our quality of life and our ability to effectively interact with others. The authors believe there are six time perspectives:

1. Past-negative ($&%# childhood)

2. Past-positive (happy memories)

3. Present-fatalistic (no use trying/can‘t change a thing)

4. Present-hedonistic (live it up/enjoy the moment)

5. Future (work & save for tomorrow)

6. Transcendental-future (religious beliefs regarding future impact present behavior)

Included early in the book is a test to help you determine your particular perspective. Sprinkled throughout the book are means of identify the time perspective of others.

All of this may seem obvious, but it isn’t. For example, nearly all intervention programs are written by people with future time perspectives for people who aren’t future oriented. This is why most intervention programs don’t work! What futures worry about and what futures know will impact their own behavior has little or no impact on individuals with other time perspectives. Consider prison. If you don’t believe you have a future or if you never think about your future, prison isn’t a large concern for you. However if you have a future time perspective, the fear of imprisonment would be a definite deterrent.

There is also a fascinating section describing how the predominant time perspectives of the societies spawning suicide bombers must change if this behavior is to be stopped. As westerners, we need to work on understanding these other societal time perspectives and their causes before we can hope to instigate real change. This same idea could be applied to pockets of our own culture.

The book doesn’t include much advice on viewing the world through the time perspectives of others. However, there is a small section at the end with advice regarding how to change your time perspective for the better. “The Time Paradox” is copyrighted 2008, so it’s possible that the duo is working on another book which will expand on this topic for those of you who find yourselves with the Eeyore-like present-fatalistic and past-negative time perspectives. Of course, if you are present-fatalistic or past-negative, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll have much hope for a sequel…

No time to read the book?  Check out the authors’ Authors@Google talk. 

Want to take the test without reading the book?  Check out the book’s website. 
　

Book Review: Imagination First 

byEric Liu & Scott Noppe-Brandon

Innovation is highly valued in today’s economy and the authors strongly argue in “Imagination First” that the best means to increase innovation is to first increase the time and energy we invest in expanding our imaginations and creativity.  This seems obvious enough, but seriously, when was the last time your boss told you to go to your cubicle and use your imagination or be creative for the next hour or two?  Can you even imagine that scenario?

The bulk of the book is spent on 24 and 1/2 surprisingly uncheesey practices individuals and/or organizations can use to foster imagination and creativity.  The practices remind me a lot of IDEO’s 51 method cards.  I can’t choose a favorite, but I love the authors’ references to specific individuals to exemplify a particular practice.       

This was my go to book for several months.  I carried it nearly everywhere I went, discussed it with anyone who was interested and rationed its chapters as though it were an excellent work of fiction I just didn’t want to end.  But it’s nonfiction and you realize when you’re done reading that it doesn’t have to end – especially if you find the right group of people.

The authors, Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon have close ties to the Guiding Lights Network and Lincoln Center Institute.  Their collective expertise and experience in fostering and promoting creativity is evident throughout the book.   

You’ll have to order the book on-line or sweet talk me into loaning you my copy – I couldn’t find a library or bookstore in Nebraska with a copy.

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Welcome to Innoveering Nebraska! 

My goal with this webite is to make business ownership a little more accessible to Nebraskans.  I plan to feature resources available to Nebraskans considering starting a small business and to celebrate businesses and inventions with Nebraska ties.  There are nearly 1.8 million of us now and even a small increase in our creation of successful small businesses could have a tremendous economic benefit to our local economy.  

Happy New Year!